Fugitive Nights (24 page)

The mortician was barely able to squeeze out of his high-backed executive chair. He was a three-hundred pounder, without a neck, but with a wheeze that sounded like worn-out brake shoes.

“I know this is a bad time,” Lynn said, “but it's urgent. We need to find the next of kin of Maria Magdalena Lugo who died last September.”

“Is something wrong?” the mortician asked, wheezing as he lit another cigarette.

“It's important for him that we have a talk. If it was a him, the next of kin, I mean.”

“Mister John Lugo,” the mortician said. “Couldn't forget him. Wanted the best of everything for his dear mother.”

“And where does Mister Lugo live?” Lynn asked, as Nelson advanced expectantly.

The mortician opened his desk drawer, removed a Rolodex, then wheezed again. He thumbed through the Rolodex and said, “I don't know his permanent address, but he gave a local address and local phone number, as well as an L.A. phone number.” He pushed the Rolodex across the desk to Lynn, who took his half-glasses from his shirt pocket, wrote down the information on a note pad, tore out the page and handed it to Nelson.

“Hope there's no trouble,” the mortician said. “He was really a fine gentleman. Small funeral, but so elegant. And orchids. I never saw so many. His mother had raised orchids.”

“We'll give him your regards,” Lynn said. “By the way, do you know what business he's in?”

“No,” the mortician said, “but he must do very well. He had his own limo and driver, not leased, he owned it.”

“Is he a Spanish gentleman?” Nelson asked.

“I don't know,” the mortician said. “Lugo's one of those names, isn't it? He seemed more Italian-American than Hispanic, if you know what I mean. But he could've been a Latino, I just can't say.”

Never one to give up gracefully, Nelson asked, “Could he've been an Arab?”

“Oh, I wouldn't think so,” the mortician said. “But these days, who knows? If I were an Arab-American I'd change my name to something like Lugo, wouldn't you?”

“Maybe I would,” said Nelson Hareem.

“Thanks for your trouble,” Lynn said.

When they were at the door, a man in a maroon blazer, wearing a snap-brim hat, stepped back politely to allow them to leave.

They didn't pay any attention except that Nelson said, “Thanks.”

When they got to the car, Lynn said, “Damn, I left my reading glasses on the desk. Be right back.”

Lynn walked inside just as the rosary was starting in the viewing room. A few of the more robust among the faithful were kneeling on the floor, but most were seated while they prayed.

“Hail Mary full of grace, the Lord is with thee, blessed art thou …”

Lynn was thinking about the first drink of the evening while he walked toward the little office and saw the back of the bald man in the maroon blazer, who was holding his hat in his hands.

Mr. Lieberman looked up and said, “Oh, you've returned! I was just telling this gentleman that the police were
also
trying to find …”

The fugitive suddenly lunged at the card, ripping it from the Rolodex. Then he mashed his hat against the face of Lynn Cutter, hooking a short right to his solar plexus that made Lynn double up and out-wheeze the mortician, who yelled, “Hey!”

The fat man got up and lumbered forward in time to grab the collar of the maroon blazer, but the fugitive ducked, spun, and hooked the mortician with the same shot. The mortician was encased in so much blubber he only wobbled, so the fugitive popped him again with a straight left that caught him on the temple, and the mortician skittered like he was dancing on marshmallows, then teetered and collapsed on Lynn Cutter, who was trying to
breathe
with the mortician on top of him, flopping like a gigantic trout.

The fugitive scurried into the corridor but his new white leather shoes slid from under him. He went down, bounced up and, trying to get traction, smacked into the gangling guy in the gray suit who'd come running down the hall toward the ruckus.

The fugitive didn't have to hit him, and had almost made it back to the foyer when Lynn Cutter leaped on his back and they knocked over the guest-book table, sending a huge floral arrangement spinning into the wall in an explosion of gladioli.

The fugitive, who was in better shape, bulled Lynn off his back and muscled under him now that he was standing on carpet, but Lynn grabbed on, whirled, and spun the fugitive through the open double doors. And suddenly the fugitive was smack in the middle of kneeling mourners. Then: pandemonium!

Everybody started hollering and screaming and trying to stream out, including two Irish nuns, and Lynn Cutter plowed through the panicked crowd, walking over a pile of old Micks who couldn't get off their knees fast enough. The fugitive shoved two guys into the priest, who knocked over two candelabras and another floral spray, and water flooded everywhere!

The fugitive, leaking blood from his nose, crouched and waited, while old folks hollered and hissed and stacked up at the door like heaps of brittle sticks.

Lynn warily advanced toward the fugitive until he had the guy backed up against the bier of Denny O'Doul, who looked like a painted mummy.

And then, still gasping and bug-eyed, Lynn charged! The fugitive feinted and threw a short punch that didn't land. But he grabbed Lynn by the curly hair, jerking him forward until his forward motion plunged Lynn's head and shoulders
inside
the casket. Then the fugitive slammed the lid on Lynn's neck, and those poor old mourners who had the courage to look started wailing and keening, like at a real old-fashioned Irish wake!

Denny O'Doul's rosary beads got looped around Lynn's ear, and the old tenor's hands had come unclasped, dead cold and papery against Lynn's face, and Lynn couldn't breathe again! But when he turned his head sideways to inhale, he smelled corn flakes!

The fugitive put his weight on the casket lid and kept hooking Lynn, once, twice, three times in the ribs and kidneys, bashing more air out of him while Denny O'Doul's eighty-five-year-old widow passed out cold, and nutty notions roared through Lynn's skull, like: Why the fuck does Denny O'Doul smell like
corn flakes
?

Then the horrible pressure was released, and Lynn shoved backward as hard as he could, popping out of the casket like a cork, falling and tumbling over backward.

By the time Lynn's world had straightened out, the fugitive had crashed through the fire exit opposite the foyer and was gone.

Nelson Hareem was sprawled in his Jeep with his earphones on, listening to Reba McEntire singing “Rumor Has It.” But Nelson pulled off the ears when he saw a bunch of people running out the front door of the mortuary and
screaming.
Then he saw Lynn Cutter sort of running out after them!

When Lynn got under the palm tree lights Nelson saw that he was limping and had blood on his face!

Nelson jumped from the Jeep when Lynn was thirty feet away, but Lynn screamed: “GET US OUTTA HERE!”

Lynn groaned in pain when he jumped into the Jeep, snatching at the bar with one hand, holding his ribs with the other, as Nelson backed up the Jeep and painted two rubber stripes on the parking lot.

“Did you see a car?” Lynn hollered.

“What car?”

“Any car! Did you see one?”

“There were some headlights a minute ago!”

“Catch that fucking car! And gimme your gun!”

They
didn't
catch the fucking car. In fact, they didn't even see taillights when they got out onto Gene Autry Trail. Nelson didn't know whether to go north or south.

“What'll I do, Lynn?” Nelson wanted to know.

“I'm outta ideas,” Lynn moaned.

“What happened in there?”

“He beat the crap outta me! He put me in a coffin!”

“Who?”

“Francisco V. Ibañez, that's who!”

“What?”

“Don't gimme
what!
Drive!”

Nelson was so baffled, confused, excited, that for once he wasn't even speeding. “How could he be in there? How could he put you in a coffin?”

“Not very gently! Will you step on it?”

“Where?”

“The Furnace Room. Where else can I escape this miserable insane lunatic case?”

“You're bleeding, and you're nuts!” Nelson said, stomping on the accelerator, swerving around a white Caddy.

“That's
his
blood!
I'm
bleeding internally! The sonofabitch tried to bust my spleen!”

“How could somebody put you in a coffin, Lynn? Tell me what happened!”

“We fought! He won!” Lynn yelled. “I did a whoop-de-do into the coffin! Then he slammed the goddamn lid on me!”

“Good Lord!” Nelson cried. “That's the scariest thing I ever heard of!”

Suddenly, Lynn looked bleakly at Nelson Hareem and said, “Now I know what poor old Bela Lugosi and Christopher Lee went through all those years! My sphincter's slammed shut!”

“I know how you feel!” Nelson cried. “It feels like somebody's Krazy-Glued
my
asshole too!”

This was the first time the fugitive regretted not choosing a cheap motel for more privacy. The layout of this elegant hotel almost guaranteed that guests would be seen entering and leaving by way of the expansive lobby.

When he parked the Buick in the guest parking lot he took off the maroon blazer, and was glad of the color. He used it to wipe the blood from his face.

The fugitive wasn't badly hurt, just a nosebleed. He'd had a tendency toward nosebleeds since childhood. When he was a boy playing soccer, his jersey was always blood-soaked by the end of a game, and his mother would weep at the sight of him.

He was hatless and his face was slightly swollen, so he kept his head down and walked briskly across the lobby to the elevators, the blazer over his shoulder, hiding his shirt. A woman standing by the elevator looked at him curiously and he realized that his right nostril had started leaking. He patted his pocket reassuringly, touching the Rolodex card, and pushed the elevator button for the third floor.

When he got to his room, he removed the card from his pocket and switched on the lamp beside the king-sized bed. He read the name John Lugo, and the Palm Springs address, and the phone number, which he realized was local. He saw another phone number which he thought was probably somewhere in Los Angeles. He would memorize all of it, but later.

His beautiful new shirt had three buttons missing, and the breast pocket was torn and hanging loose. He stripped off the shirt and crammed it into the wastebasket. The fugitive sat on the bed, pulled off the white loafers and lay back on the pillow, sniffling gently, waiting for the blood to stop.

His confidence had been very badly damaged. He couldn't begin to imagine how they'd found him. Of course, he would've recognized the one with curly hair as a policeman the second he saw him standing there, even if the mortician hadn't verified it. The man just
looked
like a policeman. But how had he been traced? Maybe they
were
as efficient as on the TV shows!

Yet it made no sense. Why would they devote such diligence to tracking a man who'd simply pushed an old lady down and stolen some files? Was it conceivable that they'd begun hunting him after he'd attacked the policeman at the airport? That was a more serious crime, of course. But how could they have connected him to that incident? Impossible!

Then he remembered reading a news story in his country about a California man who'd raped a teenager and hacked off her arms, leaving her to die in the desert, but miraculously, she'd survived. That man had served only eight years in prison and was now free on parole! The story had been given prominent coverage to show his people what it's like in the United States. The implied question was: Do you really want to live in a country where someone can commit such a horrible crime and be a free man after only eight years?

And yet … and
yet
, for a minor crime like pushing an old woman and taking some worthless files, he was pursued and hunted down with unbelievable speed. And almost caught!

If
he got home alive, and now he'd begun thinking
if
, he would never set foot in this crazy country again, not as long as he lived.
If
he got home alive …

Lynn had wiped the fugitive's blood off his face, but he looked grim as he entered The Furnace Room. He gimped along, passed Wilfred Plimsoll without so much as a wave, and headed straight for the table in the back, near the yawning fireplace. He was as happy as he could be under the circumstances to see that Breda was already there, waiting.

Nelson said, “I'll get the drinks, Lynn.”

When Lynn plopped down across the table from Breda, he was hanging on to his ribs like his guts were falling out. His right eye was slightly swollen and his knuckles were scuffed and raw.

“Did you get in a fight, or what?” Breda asked. “You look awful!”

“As a matter a fact I've been in bed. Dracula's bed.”

“Whadda you mean?”

“I was in a coffin.”

“You mean, like a small room?”

“Well, it was pretty small,” Lynn said. “And there were two of us in there.”

“Care to explain?”

“Can I have a drink first? I got a taste of formaldehyde I gotta get rid of. And the smell of corn flakes!”

Lynn didn't really begin explaining until he'd had his second dose of eighty proof anesthetic. When Lynn finally got into it, Breda listened in disbelief to the day's antics. And Lynn lost his train of thought once or twice, because he found himself paying too much attention to the freckle on her lip.

After he was through, Breda handed her glass to Nelson and said, “I think I need another one, Nelson, do you mind?”

When Nelson was at the bar fetching another round, Breda said, “Did you give your name to any of those people today?”